


You Take Me in Your Arms (and I Start to Burn)

by Fix9



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Richard Siken voice) hands, Also the web is more important in agnes’ life than in canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, I saw multiple people do fan art where they see each other through mirrors so, Just sayng, Pining, Slow Burn, Um there won’t be too much gore don’t worry lol, a lot of angst just by virtue of being a canon compliant magnus archives fic lol, also?? I think that Agnes and the vast is v sexy so, and there will be s e x but im not comfy writing smut, but not too slow bc I (like Agnes) have adhd and if I finish this it’ll be a miracle, is that what you tumblr gays want?, so sorry but, starts in 1974
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26167885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fix9/pseuds/Fix9
Summary: “remind me to tell you about agnes sometime.”ON HIATUS AS OF 12/29/20
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	1. The House of the Rising Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the cooler slower cover by Lauren O’Connell)

So the ritual hadn’t worked out. It sort of fell apart in the planning stages, or the stars hadn’t been properly aligned, or someone had a cold, or some minor, nonsensical thing that Agnes Montague had neither the interest nor the knowledge to learn about. All she had to do was start fires and look pretty. Her grand destiny. Arson and violence and chanting. Whatever it was, it didn’t work. This was the main topic of conversation at present. Agnes slipped out of the living room in the house on Hill Top Road, where she had lived for the past decade and where, due to a lack of protest on her end, the meetings of the devotees of the Lightless Flame were held. She just wanted to escape from the cramped circle of kitchen chairs, leave the dim candlelight she was so used to. She really meant no ill will toward the cause, as it were. And so she left quietly, as she did all things, and escaped upstairs to the bedroom she had spent half her life in.

She silently shut the door, slowly muffling the voices downstairs ranting about “her glorious rage” and “torturous heat.” Her room was full of a childhood she barely had, books she barely got the chance to read, records she rarely got to listen to. Cobwebs in the corner she could never seem to get rid of. It was like the room was frozen in time, a photograph of someone’s life that was not Agnes’. She did, however, find some comfort in the repeating patterns formed by the webs, in such a way that she’d spend hours as a child and into her teenage years stringing the candle wax that was so easy to come by into webs of her own. These sculptures helped quiet her furious mind, and she found herself spinning one now. She rarely made them anymore, only on days when the devotees came into her space and filled it with unwelcome voices that made the nape of her neck itch. 

She sat down at her vanity, a pathetic attempt at normalcy gifted to her by Raymond when she turned twelve. She never had any dates to get ready for, she didn’t really need a desk, as her homeschooling came second to her religious responsibilities, and she had no friends to write letters to. It remained relatively unused, except for moments like now, when she would sit and spin her wax webs. After she finished one, she would press it on the surface of the vanity table, so it all melted into the wood and made one large multicolored web. This is what she did now, adding the newly completed pink sculpture to the mass.

She traced her fingers along the patterns of wax. It was her own webbed table, a child’s replica of the one Raymond kept in the basement and pretended Agnes didn’t know about. She felt the hot rage bubble up inside her, her head getting hot and her muscles tensing. This was her house. And all she wanted was ten minutes without her grand destiny weighing down on her. All she wanted was a childhood that was taken first by the god that ran through her, and second by the man who ruled over this house, who now lay catatonic in the basement. Her boiling blood shot through her veins to her hand. She threw the first thing she could grab through the window with a smash of broken glass, the cool of the tin offering little relief to the burning of her hands. But after all, she was Agnes Montague, Daughter of the Lightless Flame, Avatar of the Desolation. Or whatever. She didn’t mind the heat.

If the devotees heard the smash, they didn’t show it. They were silent only as Agnes entered the room once more, her angry, fiery hands shaking. The cult stared at her, avoiding her eyes. “It’s time for you all to go.” Agnes’ voice was low, spitting the words onto the ground, where they sizzled at the feet of the cult that dared to overstay their welcome. 

Arthur Nolan attempted to break the silence, his position as unofficial leader forcing him to speak up. “But Agnes, we-“

“Leave.”

Sparks flew off her teeth. If the fear of—well, god wasn’t burning a hole in Arthur’s stomach, he might have even laughed at how he was reminded of a younger Agnes, such terrifying rage bursting from a four year old girl’s body. But the fear of his god did bubble inside him, and so he nodded and left quickly, the other cultists following suit.

And then Agnes Montague, Daughter of the Lightless Flame and Avatar of the Desolation, stood alone in her living room, where there had never been very much life at all. 

—————

Agnes lay on her bed, occasionally running her long legs in the air, as if riding an imaginary bike, to burn off the remaining energy from her fury. It had to be expelled through her legs, as she had disposed of the worst of it by punching her pillows, which then fell scorched on the floor, her arms exhausted.

She panted there for a while, letting the waves of anger flow through her, breathing deeply to calm the worst of the aftershock. She found herself once again thinking about letting everything go, ignoring the calls of her cult and just stopping, whatever that meant. She had given twenty years of her life to the cause. To various guardians set on controlling her life. A thought she had so often come back to at times like this. Paired, as always, with the urge to burn it all down.

Had she ever properly acted out? Had she ever done something more than throw a tantrum or throw some trinket box out the window? For all her destiny named her some powerful demigod, she never once told Raymond to fuck off. She never even fought with the other kids that lived at Hill Top, no matter how much she wanted to. She never knew what she wanted to do. But, she thought, at last, I know where to start.

Agnes ran from her bedroom into the long hallway, its hardwood floors a constant source of sock-skating and ghost stories. It was always so scary at night, whenever Agnes, or even the older kids and teenagers living there would leave their rooms at night for water or mischief, turning the corner and walking down that hallway was a formidable obstacle. It was as if the house made it that way to keep the kids in bed without complaint. Agnes hated that hallway. But she had to make some arrangements before anything could be done about it.

She quickly went through the once grand house, grabbing the stash of money Raymond kept in a secret compartment in a locked drawer, the key to which he kept around his neck, until recently. Until she was paid what she was owed; a house full of webs and bones and the corpses of the children she had grown up beside, shared dinner with every night until one by one, they disappeared into the pit of the basement. 

Except for Ronald. The great anomaly. But that was a long time ago, and she was still trapped in the web and simply burning to get out.

The car was packed, just a small suitcase with Agnes’ clothes, a box filled with candles and small trinkets. She didn’t need much. She had plenty of money, thanks to Raymond. Besides, if anything went horribly wrong, there was a line a mile long of acolytes who would gladly give up their beds if not their homes for her. 

Agnes Montague treaded slowly through the house at Hill Top Road. Every floorboard held a memory that did not feel like her own, every room filled with the ghosts of those she could never truly know. Her loneliness, her emptiness, all birthed in this haunted house. The people in the village called her a recluse. Maybe they were right. But they didn’t have the power she had, hadn’t been born gods against their wills. She began to burn.

The vanity was difficult to lift on her own, but she managed to jam it into the car. The fire raged on, but Agnes didn’t know how long the house burned. She didn’t care. She was gone by the time the smoke rose in a thick column over the trees. Smoke that rose up like the steam from the tears that sizzled on her cheeks.


	2. Big God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by Florence and the Machine

_They whisper her name that is not her true name and it sizzles and spits hot oil that she drinks like the milk of the mother she never had. ‘They’ implies multitudes, a swarm, a cult, a colony, a family. ‘It’ might work better, but ‘it’ still forms a singular figure with motives beyond_ burn  _ and drive beyond  _ destroy _. This thing is in her boiling blood, baby, and it whispers her name that is not her true name and it sizzles and spits hot oil that she drinks in quiet reflection like sacramental wine. This thing knows she will burn her true name into the flesh of the earth once this thing is ready for her but until then, her name is Agnes._

—————

Agnes’ new flat was small and dingy and perfect. It was too small for cult meetings, so she had her own space. It was dingy to its very bones, so she didn’t have to spend a day working up the energy just to stop cleaning halfway through. It was perfect for her to just be.

When she had first turned the key ( _her_ key) into the lock, she had expected more...fanfare. That was, after all, how most things tended to go for her. But there was nothing. Four empty rooms, just for her. 

The furniture she bought was probably quite ugly, but she didn’t care. Any sort of chance she might have had at developing good taste went, like all things outside of ritual and burning, down the drain pretty early on. Her bedroom was her favorite place; her bed came with curtains on the side that she could tie open on warm nights, which, considering she was a being of pure heat, was quite often. She had a bookshelf that held most of her sentimental items and books and whatnot. And the vanity, the only thing that remained of the house on Hill Top Road, stood against the wall to the right of her bed, next to the door. 

It had been a month since she had left Hill Top and moved in to her new flat, which felt gloriously age-appropriate. It would have been perfectly ordinary for a twenty one year old to finally get her own place, if she hadn’t needed to burn down the house she grew up in to do so. She was also currently ignoring the phone calls of her cult. The ringing drilled at that spot at the base of her skull. It was constant. They were so needy. Most of them had at least five years on her and yet they couldn’t seem to do anything by themselves. 

“Jesus, it’s not like I ever say anything when I’m there.” Agnes’ own voice was something that took more getting used to than she expected. She had started talking to herself more, to fill up the blissfully empty space that she knew, for the first time in her life and with such certainty, wasn’t listening. 

When these calls came and as time went by during the first week, she went from standing frozen in a tense, angry panic in whatever room she was in to running to her room, where she felt safest. She would have to answer the call of the Desolation eventually, but for now, she was alone. 

It wasn’t avoidance. At least, that’s what Agnes told herself, wandering from room to room or just lying on her bed, staring into oblivion. She always felt a particular fondness for it. The vast emptiness, the solitude, the quiet. She’d probably get very bored. Still, she often found herself wandering too close, too high up. Drinking in the vertigo like someone who wasn’t her might do. But the pull of the Hill Top web or the heat of her destiny always kept her from jumping off the edge. She was born into fire and raised by the control of some invisible puppeteer. Maybe in another life she was free to fall in the empty space. But this was her life now, and she would never touch the open air. 

—————

When Agnes was a child, she’d play a little game to keep herself busy in her extended periods of solitude. 

The rules were fairly simple: leave a Hansel and Gretel trail of polka dot scorch marks in various spots around the house and then hide. The cult, who at the time were more like incompetent babysitters than incompetent acolytes, would go on a manhunt for her, having to feel the fading heat from the burn marks themselves to track her down.

They would tell each other how brilliant she was, and at such a young age, forcing them to prove how devoted they were to her. How they’d risk the glorious terror of burnt fingertips just to make sure she was safe. They would crawl to the ends of the earth, tear their fingernails against rocky cliff faces, drag themselves bloody across some apocalyptic wasteland to lift up a tablecloth or open a crawl space door just to see her rosy cheeks form her child’s smile.

Little Agnes just wanted to play hide and seek.

She tried to play it with Raymond, but only once. Her playful scorch marks damaged the walls and left ashes everywhere. Raymond found her quickly and didn’t even have to tell her to clean up the mess.

—————

It had been a month and a half, and Agnes Montague hadn’t spoken to anyone who called her holy. 

It had been a month and a half, and Agnes Montague had  _tried_ not to speak to anyone who called her holy.

Arthur Nolan came to her flat once, as soon as he managed to track her down. She opened the door and glared at him. 

“Agnes, we need to talk.” He pushed past her into her flat. Her space.

“Um,” she replied.

“Agnes, you can’t keep ignoring your destiny. The Lightless Flame needs you. We need you. I need you.”

“Arthur.”

“You who are so glorious-“

“Arthur!” It was hard to tell to whom her raised voice was more of a shock. She stepped back, exhaled with the dry, roiling warmth of a space heater. “Look. After my house burned down,” she said it like it was an accident. Arthur said nothing, “I needed a break. I need some space.”

“But  _we_ need  _you_ , Agnes. We’re trying to rebuild the world _for you_.  Your power—it needs to purify the earth of its wrongs and build it anew in the image of your great and terrible flame.”

He sounded like he was speaking from a script the cult had written just to sound spooky and mysterious. Agnes sighed, and dropped her head. “I understand, Arthur, I just—"

“Please, Agnes. We’re going to try the ritual again in two weeks.” He handed her a slip of paper and she took it, leaving oblong scorch marks where her delicate fingers held it. “Here’s the location. It’s the standard procedure. Everything we’re tweaking is on our end, not yours. All you have to do is—“

“Stand there, burn something and look pretty,” Agnes cut him off. She nodded soberly, and quietly said, “Right. I understand. I’ll...be there, I guess.” 

He nodded quickly, patted her shoulder awkwardly, and closed the door as he left. Agnes’ hands began to shake and she marched to her room, flexing her hands as her face got hot. _Stand there, burn something, look pretty_.

She was in her room now, sat at her vanity and running her delicate fingers over the hardened wax webs on the surface. Despite her anger and frustration, she didn’t feel the urge to spin a web.

She then looked into the mirror, as she often did. She knew she was something pretty, maybe even beautiful. Those who saw her as a messiah thought of her as such, but even strangers on the street would stare, basking in her warmth and red hair. Agnes was somewhat aware of her looks, but she knew it didn’t matter. She had a more important destiny to uphold. She was destined for greatness. She was  told she was destined for greatness, so even though she could stare at her reflection, flirt with whoever caught her eye for more than a second, be worshipped as a goddess, she never felt anything towards the young woman staring back at her.

But this time, when she looked in, instead of seeing herself, all freckles and flaming tendrils of auburn hair, she saw someone else. 

She was shorter than Agnes, but not by much. She looked older than Agnes, but not by much. Her hair hung in a fluffy bob just above her shoulders. Her square jaw was set in concentration as she looked over some papers in a folder in her hands.

She noticed Agnes in return and jumped, ever so slightly. Brow furrowed, she tucked the folder under her arm, removed her glasses and used the hem of her bottle green sweater to clean the lenses, as if the woman in the mirror was merely the result of dust from the library. At least, Agnes assumed she had some sort of library job, but she couldn’t be sure. She was never allowed to visit a library. Her guardians, who later became her followers, said she was too precious, too powerful and holy to enter such a common space. Raymond knew that she had some kind of power. He knew she was one of those foolish Lightless Flame cultists, or she mattered to them in some way. She left cigarette burns around the house, though he knew she never smoked, and so he kept a close eye on her, never letting her leave the house unsupervised. Agnes knew, however, that it was merely because books were nothing but kindling to her .  As if everything wasn’t kindling to her.

Agnes watched the woman in the mirror study her, squinting and leaning closer. Agnes tried to avoid eye contact. Spending your formative years in isolation surrounded by devoted followers refusing to meet your eye out of respect (and then only making eye contact when scolding you for spoiling your appetite) will do that to you.

The woman then hesitantly raised a hand, as if to knock or wave to Agnes, who noticed small burn scars on her hand. Justas the woman went to knock, Agnes darted away from the mirror, and she was gone. 

—————

Her own voice had filled the flat, slowly but surely, the small space echoing every mumbled comment or even the occasional song sang along to the record player while she did the dishes. So it was a shock when she heard Raymond’s voice. The second major shock of the day, she supposed. Every day was just full of delightful little surprises, now, wasn’t it?

“You really thought you could escape this?” His voice was broken and croaking, coughing out the words as if his esophagus was burnt and his skin was leathered and crackling. As if he’d crawledout from under the ashes of Hill Top Road _just_ to be a dick.

“Fuck off, Raymond.” Wow,  _that_ felt good.

“ Tsk tsk, Aggie. That’s not a very familial greeting.”

“We aren’t fucking family.” She wouldn’t turn around. She didn’t know if ghosts were real, and she didn’t care to find out by staring into a face mangled by her own hand.

“Oh? We were family when you stole my house from me.”

“We haven’t been family since I learned about the shit you were pulling in the basement.” She wouldn’t turn around, even if she could feel cooled ash spat on her back.

“I suppose so. We did have some good times together, Aggie.”

“Maybe we did. But I’m done with that place now. It’s gone.” Ignore the pull, don’t look back.

“I’m afraid, my dear, that it’s not done with you. Don’t think this little vacation of yours can last forever.”

“I like it here. I can hear myself think.” Don’t turn around. Her voice was melting into her old unsure quiet.

“But the phone will keep on ringing until they come for you personally. And I bet you’ll start fiddling with wax again.”

“Fuck off,” she whispered, “it’s safe here.” She felt the familiar tug to turn around and see her destruction taunt her.

“Tell that to your god, little messiah.” Agnes could feel his breath in her hair.

When she turned around, it was as if he had never been there at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hi sorry for not posting for two months! I got busy and I sort of lost track of what I wanted to do with this, but now I’m back, babey!!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! let me know if you liked it bc I have big plans for this but also no motivation lol


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